Team photo at Bloomberg Square Mile 2013 (missing 2 peeps)
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I initially didn't want to run this race...
It was 1.6 km race costing $100 per sign up! Not to mention there was no women's category so no possibility of winning anything.
However, after seeing the enthusiastic response on the internal running channel, I felt myself being sucked into the idea. Short distances are my forte, and I always enjoy running corporate races.
By some stroke of luck, I ran into the team captain at the North Face 100 when I went to support Eric. I asked if he was still looking for people to run, and if we would have to pay the full fee. Turns out that yes, he still needed people for the team, and the fee would be subsidized $40.
Can I just say that it is so rare for my company to subsidise race fees, even if it is still freaking expensive at $60 per person, I just had to get that last slot in the team.
This was maybe 2-3 weeks ago and I was (and still am) training for a 10 km race. How was I supposed to slot in a 1.6 km training when I needed to do a lot of mileage and endurance training (vs speed training)?
I didn't really do any speed training before the race and my only prep was a recce run on the route. The route sucks balls... There were a lot of sharp bends, u-turns, steps and narrow pathways. Not ideal for a distance that depends a lot more on speed than anything else.
We sent in 2 teams, one competitive team and one fun team - each team had 10 runners. I was runner number 7 in the fun team, so by right there shouldn't have been much pressure. But I guess it's my competitive spirit and something I demanded of myself so I made sure I was fit enough for the race.
Come race day it was such a crush with 160 teams of 10 people. The roads were narrow and the waiting pen was awfully stuffy. My adrenaline levels kept spiking up and down throughout the event before I started. As the 7th runner, I had to wait approximately 40 minutes after the start of the event before I went out to race. It was horrible. I never want to be a runner so late in a relay ever again. The emcee kept raising the hype, counting down the minutes before the start... and then counting down the subsequent runners. Each time I watched a fellow team runner come in, my heart would race, as though I was the next one to go. It was bad...
By the time it was my turn to run, I had depleted my adrenaline resources. Once I received my baton, I was like comeon let's gooooooo but my legs couldn't seem to move. I felt so tired and couldn't seem to propel myself forward. After the first 200m, I finally made some progress. And it helped I had fellow runners standing on the sideline cheering me on. As it was a short race, I knew I had to keep pushing hard through the race and not slow down. It wasn't long before my throat became unbearably dry and my legs ached way before half the race was complete. I don't know how I managed to keep going the second half but I think I slowed down quite significantly.
Once on the final stretch, I knew this was it. My final push... I had to make it count somehow someway. So I kicked. Whoop it felt good going at a pace that no one was able to overtake me. I was so happy to pass on the baton and I saw I had clocked 6.12 when I checked my watch. Way above my expectations of 6.40-7.12. In fact, my official time was 6.05 and can you believe it I started berating myself for not going 6 seconds faster to clock at sub 6 timing. -.-"
See lap 7..
My team did 42nd overall which was still pretty good since we were only doing this for fun. Our first team got 3rd and we got to share their glory, taking the "winners" photos as a group and going on stage together to collect the prize. The event could have been organised a bit better though.. We were entitled to 3 drinks, 1 dessert and 1 main course, but the queue for the food after the event was horrible. There were 5 queues, all equally long and slow-moving... We queued for 40mins and the line barely moved 1 metre. You would think that they would have catered for 1600 people clamouring for food after the event right?
Some of my teammates never got to eat anything coz of the queue.
I liked that there was a post-run event and I got to hang out with the other runners from my company. We popped the champagne that we got as part of our 3rd place prize and celebrated our victory with the party music going on late into the night.
I didn't expect to enjoy myself so much despite all the organisational hiccups...
I would definitely do this again next year (hopefully it will be fully subsidised heehee).
